Boar Predator, NECA Movie Series 4 Review

Toy company NECA has produced some nice pieces over the years and now we're beginning to see some real amazing products from them. We're use to nice paint apps and well-hidden articulation but sometimes that articulation has been a little lacking. Not this time. With the 7" Series 4 Movie Predators we get a whole new slew of reptilian hunters ready to go on a big game expedition on your shelves.

With the Boar Predator you'll notice right off the bat it looks like a scaled down version of a Hot Toys figure. The sculpt is mindbogglingly detailed with all sorts of skin texture, armor tech, and individual sculpted accessories. His helmet is particularly nice with all sorts of pitting and hand-hammered style of detail. The leather armor is strung with fabric cord and the tiny skulls are really well done. This time the netting looks believable as part of the sculpt. His flying disc is well done and fits perfectly in his fingers, but that's the only accessory he comes with.

As paint apps go this figure is a thing of beauty. Different faded flesh tones mixed with a mottled black and orange look to his skin make him look quite realistic. A gloss is applied to only the lighter shades of flesh to give the Boar Predator a really unique look to his skin. Each dread is fully painted and the tiny bands on them sport a 2 color weathered look. Inside his disc carrier are tiny painted gears as well. Truly NECA went all out here.

But what about articulation? I'm happy to say NECA went all out here too. Their Predators now sport a ball waist, ball hips, and double-jointed knees so you can make them crouch. Along with the regular ball shoulders/neck/wrists, and elbows this allows for a full range of posing at last. You'll need to heat the ankles to get full motion out of them as I found out later but once you do it's near perfect articulation for your hunters.

The points of articulation are well hidden too with only the knee pegs slightly visible. Everything else fits snugly like a Hot Toys Predator. Now for a gripe. All the Boar Predators sport two lower left arms. Either way the piece is the same just flipped around so the bottom of the armor sculpt faces up and makes it look different. This was probably done to save on tooling costs and you really won't notice it unless you look underneath to see the armpad display.

I found out you can heat and pop the previous series Predator figure parts on so this gives NECA a wealth of different parts to mix and match to make unique figures. You could to this too, well except for the lower legs which are hinge jointed instead of plug-in. But that doesn't mean you can swap heads with your other figures for some cool looks. So what's the verdict? For around $16 you cannot go wrong. Amazing sculpt, full articulation, and great paint apps make series 4 look like they stepped off the screen. BBTS has them as a set or singles for a great price, or you can check your local Toys R Us as that's the only place I've seen them at so far.